I sound foreign back home?

Six months ago, I wrote that I was done apologizing for my Patois. Done shrinking my Jamaican tongue to fit Canadian boardrooms, classrooms, and conversations. I meant every word.

What I didn’t see coming was Jamaica. Here is the plot twist: nobody tells you about diaspora life: when you go back home, home looks at you like you are foreign too.

I landed in Kingston feeling like myself: fully, unapologetically Jamaican. My Patois was ready. My sea moss knowledge was ready. I had just stood in Bob Marley’s bedroom at 56 Hope Road and felt rooted in something ancient. Then I opened my mouth at a shop in Kingston, and the woman behind the counter smiled and said, “You are from fareen, right?”

Foreign. Me. The girl from Rockfort. The one who wrote 800 words about never apologizing for her Patois again.

My Canadian had crept in the way it always does when I am navigating new spaces and changed the cadence just enough. My Patois was still there, still real, but it had this Toronto undertow that apparently everybody could hear.

The first time it happened, I laughed. By the third time, something deeper stirred. No shame. I want to be clear about that, but a quieter recognition: I had spent so much energy defending my Caribbean identity in Canada that I forgot the diaspora creates its own accent. A new one. One that belongs to both places, yet to neither place perfectly.

Here is what I decided: that is not a problem to fix. That is a story to tell.

In Canada, my Patois is my giveaway. It tells people: I am Jamaican. I carry something from somewhere else. I belong to more than this cold. In Jamaica, my Canadian is my giveaway. It tells people: I left, I came back, and I didn’t drop who I became in the in-between. Both are true. Both are mine, and for the first time, I felt proud of both without needing to explain either.

Here is what healing through language has actually taught me: identity is not a single frequency. It’s a harmony. Jamaican and Canadian, yard and diaspora, roots and route; these aren’t contradictions. They are the full song.

The woman in the Kingston shop and I ended up talking for twenty minutes. I explained my Canadian Jamaican hyphen. She told me about her cousin in Scarborough. We laughed about how Toronto and Kingston are basically the same city with different weather and different slang for the same feelings. By the end, she was not looking at me like I was foreign. She was looking at me like family who came home a little changed, which is exactly what I was.

That is the diaspora experience. You change. The place you left changes, and when you return, you are negotiating two versions of yourself in real time, in your own voice, using your own tongue.

I’m not apologizing for that anymore either. Not for sounding Jamaican in Canada. Not for sounding Canadian in Jamaica. Not for being the hyphen between two homes.

This trip confirmed what I have been learning through every stage of this column: the parts of yourself you were taught to hide usually carry the most truth. My accent (in both directions) is proof that I survived the crossing, built a life, and came back whole enough to stand in both places without pretending to be less than I am.

Mi nah apologize fi di journey weh shape mi voice. In any country. In any room. In any language. The accent is the whole story.